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Massachusetts Conference Edition
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Becoming a blessed churchby Marlene Gasdia-Cochrane, Editor April/May 2008 What exactly is a blessed church?
According to N. Graham Standish – author, professor, speaker, Presbyterian pastor, and workshop leader for an upcoming Pastoral Excellence Program event – it is a glimpse of what a church can be. It is a vision of a healthy community uniquely grounded in a relationship with God that allows blessings to flow through it. Standish also believes it is a vision too few churches have today. He believes there are so many factors that keep churches from becoming blessed communities that it’s hard to grasp the full ramification of this vision. “Why have so many left the mainline churches like the UCC?” Standish asks. “The reason is that we stopped being places that help people encounter Christ and experience the Spirit.” In his book, Standish writes: “What inhibits the formation of blessed mainline churches may be partly that pastors, educators, and lay leaders have been inadequately trained not only in the practicalities of church leadership, but also in the knowledge of how to tap into the power of God to guide and help them. Their training becomes so academic and intellectual that they lose the life-giving sense of God’s call that initially led them into ministry and that can sustain them in ministry.” “I believe that one of the prominent reasons that mainline denominations, and their churches, are declining is that we have lost our spiritual center,” he said. “We’ve lost the centrality of prayer, discernment, and seeking God’s will in every part of our congregations and lives. We no longer ask whether God is calling us to a certain ministry or mission. Instead, we follow tradition, the majority, or the will of the people who give the most money. What I teach is a way of doing church that is centered in the question, ‘God, what are you calling us to do?’ and then ‘How do we do what we have sensed is God’s will?’” How do we lead our churches out of dysfunction and into blessing? Standish believes the solution lies in overcoming ‘rational functionalism’ – which he describes as “the tendency of denominations, their congregations, and their leaders to subscribe to a view of faith and church rooted in a restrictive, logic-bound theology that ignores the possibility of spiritual experiences and miraculous events, while overemphasizing a functional practice disconnected from an emphasis on leading people to a transforming experience of God.” In other words: invite God in to every discussion, every meeting, every decision the church makes. Standish practices what he preaches. He is presently the pastor of a vibrant church in Pennsylvania that has more than doubled in size and attendance over the past 10 years, and that is doing some wonderful things as a church. Standish recalled a comment made by a seminary student who served an internship in his church that illustrated how accustomed people can be to the type of spiritual dysfunction about which he writes and speaks. “After participating in our church budgeting process (which entails bringing all committees together in a time of prayer to discern what God is calling us to do, and putting aside squabbles and turf battles to seek what God wants), he said, ‘I didn’t know it could be like this. I just thought that arguing and fighting over the budget was how it was done in all churches.’” The main focus of Standish’s work is teaching pastors and church leaders how to intentionally seek and do God’s will together. He advises them on how to bring prayer, discernment, and faith into the leadership of the congregation so that leaders – clergy and lay – act out of a desire to follow the Spirit’s leadings and serve Christ. He shows leaders how to listen for God’s will, and then how to implement that will in pragmatic ways. “To put all of this more succinctly,” he said, “I address the spiritual hunger of people in our culture.” Trinitarian Congregational Church (Tricon), United Church of Christ, of Concord, looked to Standish’s book to inspire spiritual growth in their community of faith. One of its members, Bill Hoover, reported that after a year of following Standish’s suggested practices, they have started experiencing a genuine renewal of life and an increasing comfort in a different way of doing some of the church’s work. (See separate article.) “Discernment takes time, centeredness, intentionality, and an openness to the Spirit,” Hoover said. “As such practices have become more accepted and viewed as the norm, some committee meetings have become richer and interestingly the work of the group is still accomplished in an effective manner.” Standish said: “I hope that those Massachusetts Conference churches who attend the April 12 event will discover a new way of doing church that really reconnects them with the heart of church, which is to be a place where people learn to hear and follow Christ, both as communities and as individuals. “I hope they benefit from a renewal of Spirit that allows them to grow spiritually and missionally in a way that can lead, over time, to numerical growth,” he continued. “I have a basic theory: spiritual growth must precede numerical growth because otherwise the numerical growth becomes shallow and rootless.” “Whether by reading my book, or attending the event, I want the readers and participants to leave with a clearer understanding of how to restore spiritual vibrancy to their congregations by nurturing spiritual depth and discernment among their leaders…. How to bring prayer and discernment into how we operate church boards, do budgeting, stewardship, worship, and so much more.” Standish summarized his teachings and practices. “Becoming a blessed church means becoming what a church already is: the body of Christ in a particular place. It is a place in which people form a vibrant sense of faith, hope, and love that comes naturally from being part of a community of faith, hope, and love,” he said. “The blessed church is a place in which people tangibly experience God as Purpose, Presence, and Power; and because they also embrace the sacred, they experience God through sacred symbols, sacraments, art, architecture, and more. “Blessed churches are places where people serve God in ways that are unique to them and their context because they are trying to live in harmony with their calling. Ultimately, blessed churches are places that have discovered the great spiritual truth of congregational life: God wants to bless us, God wants our churches to thrive in their own way, and all we have to do is create the conditions for God to be welcome.”
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